Threat to national office of Jehovah's
Witnesses grows

On 15 February 2017, the Administrative Center
of Jehovah's
Witnesses in Russia was forced to turn over to the Russian
Ministry of Justice
more than 73,000 pages of internal documents. In the notification
about the
unscheduled inspection, the Ministry of Justice of Russia did not
hide the fact
that it was acting at the request of the office of the prosecutor
general of
the Russian federation. What does such an inspection signify?

On 2 March 2017 a year will have passed since
the day of the
issuing to the Administrative Center of a warning about the
impermissibility of
conducting extremist activity. In it the deputy to the Russian
prosecutor
general threatens the closure of the centralized religious
organization in the
event that there appear in the course of 12 months "new instances"
of
extremist activity. Believers tried unsuccessfully to challenge
the
prosecutorial warning in courts of various instances, arguing for
the illegality
and artificiality of accusations of extremism against the
Jehovah's Witnesses.

During these 12 months, the number of cases of
falsification
of evidence against the Jehovah's Witnesses substantially
increased, primarily
by means of plants of printed "extremist materials" in houses of
worship. In 2016 alone there occurred no fewer than 46 of such
plants, several
of which were recorded on surveillance cameras. Believers sent
pertinent
statements to law enforcement agencies, although instead of
investigating them
and identifying criminals, prosecutor offices issued warnings to
the believers
themselves.

In order to declare Jehovah's Witnesses outside
the law, the
prosecutor's office follows a simplified scenario. One planted
brochure often
is the equivalent of the warning to a local religious organization
(Mestnaia
Religioznaia Organizatsiia—MRO). After this, in the course of a
year after the
warning, due to new plants, "new instances" of extremist activity
of
this MRO are identified. On the basis of this completely
fabricated

case, the MRO is liquidated. And the fact of
the liquidation
of the MRO is used for accusing the centralized organization of
extremism. It
was on this basis that the warning to the Administrative Center
was issued. And
the prosecutor general in his request to the Ministry of Justice
about
conducting the unscheduled inspection maintains that "new
instances"
of extremist activity by the Administrative Center are already
established,
since after the warning, several more MROs were liquidated in
accordance with
the aforementioned scenario.

Does the prosecutor's office intend to use this
scenario
with respect to the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses
in Russia and
to liquidate it on the basis of the fabricated accusations of
extremism? This
is not known, but all necessary steps for this have already been
undertaken by
the office of prosecutor general.

"Now the Ministry of Justice, at the request of
the
office of prosecutor general, is thoroughly examining the property
and activity
of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia," says Yaroslav Sivulsky of
the
Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. "Is the
full-scale
inspection a preparation for a lawsuit for the liquidation of the
Administrative Center? We do not know. However, in light of the
fact that the
religion of the Jehovah's Witnesses is professed by hundreds of
thousands of
Russian citizens, such a step would be a genuine catastrophe with
respect to
rights and liberties in our country.

Without any exaggeration, this would cast us
back to the
dark times of persecutions for our faith, which are still fresh in
the memory
of the older generation. I hope that this does not happen." (tr.
by PDS,
posted 16 February 2017)

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